The real problem with bitcoin is like buying an antique on the street to resell - Someone may be willing to pay a lot for it (just for fun whatever) but it is totally up to the buyer to determine how much it is worth.

And why bitcoin? You can have buttcoin, dogecoin and whatever lamecoin.

Have a listen to yourself 'jangojadder' who doesn't want to post under his regular handle. You sound like the same Wall Street bankers sell these CDOs to offload risk for your bank that frees up collateral that you can lend even more money. This came up with you guys wondering why rec players won't use Bitcoin and I told you why. Unregulated markets are a huge risk and you are trusting people with your money when you buy it and have no idea what the consequences are. You want to talk about Bitcoin pillar of "stability". How about the US Govt sorts out the Pension funds that are in strife at the moment, how about they sort income, asset and wealth inequality in the country. This brings stability, not some fake emoney that is created and traded out of thin air.

When people like you who haven't taken time to read the material stop drowning out people that have, I will be allowed to return with me SN.


No, remember this is your fiat market system that you are describing. We want to return to a monetary standard, like gold, but as N@sh explains but no one listens, gold itself is not actually that stable either, not compared to something like bitcoin.

"Regulated" markets are controlled markets with fake prices. This is what we want to avoid, and by looking at the ideal you can extrapolate a monetary policy that will naturally slide society towards it. All the things you point out are important yes, but your government is not going to straighten it out.

It is like paying super high rake and expecting sites to sort out playability issues and security costs. Ultimately there is exponentially more value if the players or citizens keep there rake/taxes, and start private ventures on their own...

I know you all like to argue, but did you read the lecture and explanatory material yet?

@mtgalex: bitcoin has multiple main "decentralized" style exchanges that creates a system of prices that is ultimately more fair than anything else on the planet. Again it is the opposite of what you describe, I think its just it kicked our society in the ass with how fast it happened.

Satoshi Nakamoto/Nick Szabo owns our society...who are they?

This is absolute rubbish. I would be happy to return to gold as the standard as opposed to Fiat. Gold has (on ave) gone up low percentage points each year over time so this is good to get a bit more money in society due to population growth etc

As for the rest of your info I do promise I will read it when I get some time.

It seems rubbish, but gold is also controlled political and so its mining schedule is not stable

N@sh: "One problem with gold is the cost of mining it is not necessarily steady". 47:14"

Why do we think he points this out?

The gold standard was helpful but ultimately even it had to bow to "political pressure".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_Shock


So there needed to be an idea of how to create a new comparable standard that was immune to such pressure.

All NVG threads morph to Bitcoin flame wars.

It seems natural since we are collectively "game theorists", and the topic of the day seems to be the "currency" wars in relation to the online poker networks.

Especially since most of us owe our living at least partially to this man:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideal_money

So many people are so upset, but then we have the topics of ideel money and ideel poker, which describe the advent of a new currency system that will pave the way for asymptotically rakeless poker, or in other words exponentially decreasing rake.

All over the world countries are repatriating their gold in relation to change economic times and people in countries like russia and many others are begging for a currency option they can put their faith in.

Meanwhile the creator of bitcoin is retweeting key articles like Software Is Eating the Law - Response by Marvin Ammori & Adam B. Kern

http://m.democracyjournal.org/689527...3144198bb5ea7/

And the players are looking for a place to store their bankrolls:

The decline is mainly because of a decline in style from chain-wearing bighitters to nerds with headphones.

very well said
I think its now in the growth stage like how online poker was in the past
5-10 years later, it will dry up like how online poker has become today, as more people pick up on the strategies and improve on their gameplay

I think online poker has passed the mature stage and is going into a decline stage, eventually consumers will move on to more fun and exciting products, a honest but sad truth

RIP pokerstars

I come from asia and I only need to make 500 usd a month to support my living expenses and life style... with so many other similar grinders like me on pokerstars, profit margins just keep dropping... in a truly competitive market no body makes a profit, thats what u learn in business school right?

no muneez anywhere - everyone solid.

The crazy Nash dude joining with his multiple newly created posting accounts is usually the sign that a thread has "jumped the shark."

Guess we will see if threads still get derailed by Bitcoiniacs throughout 2015.

it's not an east v west issue

the difference is, eastern players are worse off and have more time/motivation to endlessly study GTO simulators and other computer driven resources that let them effectively memorize computer simulated strategy

the game is at deaths door not because russians are "better"

the game is at deaths door because its not a human v human game anymore

Q: whats the diff between your computer playing for you or you clicking for the computer?

A: one small step

was really great while it lasted but its over now and its only going to get worse

PS - this not only applies to all games played for $ over the internet but also any task where a human can be outperformed by AI (which will gradually become all tasks)

i play on a site that up to about a year ago:
Great software(like close to stars)
100nl and under, almost all fish. You could 12 table nl50 4 handed with 3 fish on 10 of those tables.
200+: you had 2 fish on each table and the regs were mostly a few multisite bumhunters and the rest were terrible local spewy regs
Lots of fish chat in the chatboxes

Then they changed the software, made it similar to bigger sites and added cartoons. Made it easier for international regs to join. Gave more % to affiliates, removed the low 20bb min buyin, added waitlists, removed the 4max reg tables(fish love those) for deeper ones that are empty.

So the site that was fun for fish(4handed actually gives a bigger edge to lagtard fish), super super profitable for a decent lot of regs turned into a bot/reg infested site at lower stake and a dead zone at higher stakes with regs sitting out 5 on a table leaving a seat for a fish.

All fish that were daily 200+ players are playing micros now and much nittier. No chat except international regs berating the fish.

Catering to the regs = the worst. Thats why bovada does so well and everybody is happy.

My site introduced 2 tables per stake recently. You still see the name but huds dont work on them. Those tables are usualy 4-5 fish having fun, chatting and being super aggro. Most regs are either bots that dont support it or scared to play 1 table with 4 fish and no hud. It just proves that it does not take much for online poker to fix itself. Im making 70% of my profits from those 2 tables i start and im also actually enjoying myself on them

What's the typical rake as percentage of gross money won? I.e. gross money being tally of only winning pots...

Seems like everyone is right. Rake too high, games much tougher... I think poker sites ruined enjoyment factor of poker by allowing 20 tabling rake-backing

This is exactly what I was saying in my earlier post. rake isn't killing online poker, multi tabling nits have turned it into a game where it has no room to move and a minuscule increase in rake supposedly has devastating effects.

A game that is so reliant on and sensitive to rake increases has just got it all completely wrong and online cash games are just terrible games as a result but regs are oblivious to this because they think volume is the key.

This is just so wrong and misguided.

Live poker is the model that has to followed if players want a sustainable game. Yes online poker was hugely profitable back in the day but the diminishing skill gap (as has been mentioned by another poster) has resulted in this game being so sensitive to nuances in rake that it has to be unsustainable.

Somebody disagreed with me earlier when I said rake in live poker is just so much greater than online yet live is hugely profitable and can sustain any rake increase. Let me give you an example of why I say this because my casino probably had the most atrocious rake in the universe.

At NL500 I pay 10% up to $10 PLUS a $10/hr time charge. So if I just consider the time charge alone I'm paying $10 every 25 hands. Now apply this to online poker playing 1500 hands/hr, that's the equivalent of paying $600/hr before rake.

This game is still hugely profitable.

Rake is not the issue. Multi-tabling nits playing $2 pots are the problem.

BOREDOM, not rake is the key issue at stake here. You need 5 players calling 10BB opens with A7s and Q8 to make the games profitable. You don't get that online but you do live.

Games need to be boring. You need players playing 1 table only (or max 2 or 3 if you really don't want to accept it) so that they have to play NL500 instead of NL25 if they want to make any real money and you need them playing weak hands because they can't be bothered to wait around for premium starting hands.

And to do this rake must be increased, not decreased, so that it's profitable for companies to run this game with reduced volume.

You can hate this all you like but live poker will always thrive, online poker won't as long as players think volume is so important.

Long-term, being a first world online pro is not going to be a smart choice. Either player pool will be global and you can't compete with people from countries with lower cost of living (If the best can make 5k/month, it's not worth it to try and become the best if your alternative is 2k/month, but it is when it's 400/month), or it won't be and the market is too small. I guess EU-wide or USA-wide poker could be big enough, but that does not seem likely

Rake is a problem...for sure, but in the end Western pros need pokersites that segregate players by cost of living.

If there is no segregation there will always be a large net flow of money from wealthy countries to poor ones. If countries of similar wealth are pooled this wouldn't happen, and the games would be quite healthy, even with the current rake.

I can't speak for the stats quoted and whether they're correct or not but at least this guy gets it

I'm pretty confident that the ability of people to mass table micro stakes at a competent level is what destroys poker. Put in a 4 table cap and they have to move up or gtfo. Problem solved.

Lol, you guys must be getting your experiences from nl5, where there are indeed tons of nits from eastern europe, winning with their 16/14 style. At midstakes+, the (tougher) regs on stars are waaay looser than their counterparts on small, high-rake sites, since they have to be in order to win. The impression of games being tighter comes from the fact that nowadays there is at most 1 recreational player per 6-max table, while on smaller sites there might be multiple.

Also lol @ high fold to 4bet argument, nobody is folding to 4bets anymore, that's the way in which the game is evolving.

Actually, I wrote midstakes+, but the same thing applies to small stakes (nl100 and nl200) as well, with exception for zoom, which indeed seems extremely nitty by nature.

dancingtodd

I'm on an iPhone so I can't multiquote you but I'll requote your whole post so that it still exists after it gets deleted.

I actually don't know why they're deleting your posts because you're obviously mildly intelligent and articulate with a point of view though misguided.

Re some of your points:

I dont know you lack pm. I've never heard of you until today.

Your point about effective rake is trivial when compared to the fluctuations in rake that live poker can withstand. I get it, one site might be 1% tougher than another. Who cares? That's precisely why online poker has it so wrong. The fact that this is even a consideration says more about the viability of online poker than anything.

The fact that you say 'it's not a minor increase in rake' again supports this argument.

How is live poker rake dramatically lower than online or is this just calculated by some bs weighting factor you're using to determine effective rake? The amount of rake paid per hand is significantly greater per hand live than it is online. Add in a time charge like I pay ($10/hr, effectively $10 per 25 hands) and it's a different ball park altogether.

You state that 'The field online is observable more difficult than live and should be priced accordingly'. Obviously this is your weighting factor but what a crock of bs. The field is not more difficult because the players are better. The field is 'more difficult' (as you say) because of the playing style that is required to beat it. Players aren't better or worse online, there are just more players capable of playing optimally (for online only) in an environment that doesn't allow huge win rates. The edge that the best online grinders have online doesn't translate into a live environment. The edge that a strong winning live reg can have playing live is significantly greater than the online player can have online and hence rake increases aren't amplified in the live environment like they are online. Rake isn't the issue live that it is online.

All this sounds like a live v online debate but really it is just a way that showing all your absurd research is just that....absurd. I'll ask again, do you actually play live?....because you could save yourself a lot of time reading theory and realise what I'm saying makes sense.

Volume based play is killing online poker because it directly determines the way you need to play. Someone was stating in this thread or it may have been the other thread about win rates in the golden era that players played 32/14 and crushed the games in the past.....welcome to live poker. Maybe it's living in a time warp but I'd rather live in that era than whatever era you're stuck in.

Don't like a room? Play on the rooms you like (or live). Thinking videos are killing online poker? Then don't give them $100 a month to consume their products. Find other ways to educate yourself.

Just vote with your feet. There is not much else we can do as individuals anyway against large organisations.

This is such a silly argument. You're essentially expecting a conspiracy of silence to have been maintained by hundreds (thousands?) of people who didn't even know each other. If almost everyone cooperated by remaining silent, the rewards for "defecting" and offering instruction for pay would have been huge and the short term consequences non-existent. It's just not a stable situation and I don't understand how you can fault anyone for not caring to try to maintain it.

People were going to get more organized about improving their play and games were going to get tougher. It had to happen. It's not a stable, natural situation for a moderately smart, moderately motivated kid to be able to make a couple hundred thousand dollars a year from his laptop just because he knows about an opportunity that most people don't. It's a self-correcting anomaly. More people will find out it exists, competition will increase, and the amount of aptitude and effort required to make a good or great income will fall into line with other ways of making money that exist in the world. This process isn't anyone's fault and raging against the people who helped it to happen is missing the point.

Yes, games wouldve gotten harder one way or the other but at what speed?

I played online recreationally from 2005-2009 and was one of the better players without knowledge. I play for a living since 2009.
Games barely got any tougher 2005-2009 and massively detoriated afterwards. Probably just coincidence...
(Moneymaker won in 2003, boom came in, strangly not much changed til 2009/2010, did it?)

Alot of people wouldve never dropped out of college or quit their job in order to play for a living after reading supersystem but when u see a 24yo winning 4000 bucks in half and hour and see a garph hes up already 200k tis year u might reevaluate.

And yes i wouldve thought people who were clever enuff to make mirrions a year wit zero effort would also be clever enuff to stfu - my fault.

State of teh current environment is 90% bc of audio visual education created by people who in almoast all cases wouldve been better off to grind and stfu. So yeah, i like to rage against tis bc those people are as being mentioned mostly idolized while they crippled a healthy economy in a couple of years.

Now u prolly say if they didnt do it somebody else wouldve... imagine nobody wouldve.
Imagine nobody would throw garbage in teh ocean. But well, since somebody else will do it anyway wat does it matter to me???...

Wat a wonderful world...


and still it goes on and on, yes we needed another 2 new coaching sites in 2013 and 2014 bc games were getting better and better and teh siq thing is that they still manage to get some absolute uber crushers to produce education (especially in PLO - good that we havent seen how NL games developed after CR, DC and co and how decent winrates went from 7PTBB to 3.5bb...) where sometimes a couple of bigblinds is moar than what they even get for a video. But yes, lets share our wisdom, lets decrease edges even more (bc sites not doing enuff already with zoom, spin and gos, etc) so that we can all meet in 5 years looking for a job with no degree and a 7year gap in teh CV...